About the Flinn Foundation

Strategies

Build: Partner with Arizona universities, research institutions, industry, and other funders to build collaborative research infrastructure.

Translate: Identify and invest in signature projects to facilitate the application of new discoveries to clinical medicine and personalized patient care.

Champion: Promote awareness of Arizona’s bioscience enterprise by providing timely, factual information and counsel.

The Foundation has assumed two important complementary roles to help Arizona become a global competitor in the biosciences. One is to be a strategic investor, partnering with others to support the needs of a rapidly growing bioscience sector. To date the Foundation has committed more than $50 million toward this goal. The Foundation has also awarded millions in grants funds to Arizona’s universities to support the Flinn Scholars Program, and to the arts community, most recently through the Metro Phoenix Partnership for Arts and Culture.

The second role is to function as an objective resource, facilitating and coordinating discussions among key leaders to encourage successful collaborations and achieve the goals outlined in Arizona’s Bioscience Roadmap. The Foundation has become strongly identified as the Roadmap’s champion.

Biosciences

Grant projects aim to strengthen Arizona's biosciences infrastructure and thereby improve the state's capacity to compete nationally and internationally in the biosciences economy. The Foundation supports multidisciplinary, collaborative efforts involving research teams at the state's public universities and nonprofit research institutions. Grants do not support a specific disease, discipline, or single investigator's interests.

The Foundation has committed significant grant funds to help the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) translate genomic discoveries into diagnostic and preventive tools in the fight against complex diseases; the International Genomics Consortium (IGC), which combines genomic analysis, bioinformatics, and diagnostic technologies, to discover biomarkers for complex diseases, such as cancer; and the Critical Path Institute (C-Path), an innovative research partnership with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and major pharmaceutical firms, to develop safer and more effective drug regimens. With the more sensitive diagnostic tools emerging from these research enterprises, physicians may more quickly determine how effective some medications will be for some individuals or ineffective for others.

In combination with genomic analysis, protein analysis is expected to confirm one’s inherited susceptibility to disease, as well as the consequences of lifestyle and environmental exposures for disease. That is the target of the new Partnership for Personalized Medicine.The Partnership is led by Nobel Laureate Lee Hartwell, president of Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and includes TGen and Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute. Initial funding for the Partnership was provided by The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust and the Flinn Foundation.

In an effort to advance the commercial sector, the Foundation has supported the Arizona BioIndustry Association, and also made direct investments in a few signature projects to translate new discoveries emerging from Arizona’s research investigators into more sophisticated clinical medicine and personalized patient care.

Two additional signature grant programs complement the commitment to help Arizona build a knowledge-driven economy:

The Flinn Scholars Program

To enhance Arizona’s need for a talented and diverse workforce, the Flinn Scholars Program, in partnership with Arizona’s public universities, annually awards 20 top Arizona high school graduates full scholarship support. The program aims to strengthen the ability of the universities to compete for such students and to provide the students an outstanding academic experience. About 500 students apply every fall for the 20 awards.

The Arts

The Foundation is reviewing its arts grantmaking strategies following the recent completion of a multi-year commitment to the Metro Phoenix Partnership for Arts and Culture to promote a vibrant creative community.  Most recently, the Foundation administered a special, one-time, $500,000 emergency grants program for local arts and culture organizations in spring 2010, and plans to co-sponsor with the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust the Arizona Town Hall's session on arts and culture in spring 2011.

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For grant listings, see Annual Reports in Reports and Multimedia section.